On Thursday, I had the sincere pleasure of speaking at TS2 2008: The national conference for exhibition and event marketers.

The biggest problem in tradeshows today for attendees is that they’re really not a lot of fun.

Trolling the floor of a tradeshow feels somewhere between wandering Costco with no shopping list and being the only woman at a dance club; A miasma of lonely reps eager to cast you in their case study starring role to justify the cost of the trip upon return.

It’s not much more fun for exhibitors either. Representatives often have to start from square one with everyone who crosses the threshold for more information. If an exhibitor is lucky enough to scan an attendee, that information is basically piled up in a one-size-fits-all database.

Dragged back to the home office, the resulting spreadsheet meeting the minimum requirements of information gathering; presenting the daunting tasks of sifting, sorting, and following-up: These leads are barely warm at all. Probably why many attendees at TS2 admitted that the vast majority of tradeshow leads never get followed up on at all.

Luckily, games, some programming and solid strategy go a long way towards solving everyone’s problems…. In the slideshow above, you’ll see our proposed solution to bring fun, viral marketing, and education together into something you can easily build around for a far more valuable tradeshow presence: before, during, and after your event.

Thank you very much to all the folks who worked so hard to make the presentation and the conference such a success:

Trent Oliver, from Blue Telescope for providing some incredible case studies, they do some astounding interactive event work over there. Marc L Goldberg from Marketreach Inc., who was my track chair and provided excellent insights to revise the original draft.

Joan Schuldenfrei, the Education and Conference Manager at TSEA, and Qi Fan, TSEA Conference & Event Planning Coordinator. We spent a lot of time together in the speaker room, where she commanded the hectic in and out of so many speakers with nothing less than style and grace.

Related posts:

1. Get Ready for Tradeshow Season
2. TS2: The Reviews Are In
3. SXSW Postgame: All The Web’s a Game
4. All The Web’s A Game: The Presentation